28/11/2011

I finally had the chance to present something at the Thessaloniki Tech Talk Sessions also known as 0x375. The people over there have done a great job, and I truly mean that, bringing tech people together. Almost once a month 2 speakers can present a tech topic they like at an open auditorium inside the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. On those events people from Thessaloniki, but also from nearby cities, gather and have a great time, not only during the presentations but afterwards as well. I won’t spoil the events that take place during the tech talks, because you should definitely go if you are curious, but I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for as many as 15 to 20 people to go for beers after the talks!

So, the past Friday (25/11/2011), me and @apoikos traveled from Athens to Thessaloniki to present at 0x375. My presentation was about some security concepts on IPv6 networks, how old attacks of the IPv4 world transform to new ones on the IPv6 world and about some new ones that will appear on local networks sooner or later. I also had prepared some small live demos, but as always it’s very hard to succeed in a live demo if you don’t quite control the environment. At least some of the stuff I wanted to show were successful, and I’m happy with those. (Thanks to Nuclear for booting his OS X guinea pig)

Some apologies…When giving a presentation on IPv6, in an event that has no other introductory IPv6 presentations, I always face the same problem, most people are not very well aware of how different this protocol is from IPv4. When I ask the audience how well do they know IPv6, most people are embarrassed to say they have never actually used it, so the audience stays very, VERY silent. This means that I have to put around 15-20 slides to make a “quick introduction to IPv6″, and this unfortunately takes usually over 30′ of presentation time. Some techy/advanced people might be bored with this, but there’s no other way to overcome this “issue”. If you go straight to the point and start discussing about ND ICMPv6 messages most people won’t be able to keep up…so I’m sorry if I made some of the audience get bored by my first slides. I promise that my next talk on 0x375, cause there will surely be a next one, will be less boring for you

Thank you all for coming there, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!